Symbol of Underground Railroad

Family and historians say they eagerly await Becker College's efforts to restore the iconic house that once belonged to the abolitionist Rev. Samuel May.

In 1966, the college purchased The May House, which was designated a part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom by the U.S. National Park Service in 2008.

Abby Kelley Foster's Liberty Farm in Worcester is also a stop on the Underground Railroad, an effort described by the park service as “sometimes spontaneous, sometimes highly organized,” a network of people — black and white — places and means of transportation that helped slaves escape bondage.

It is estimated that more than 100,000 people sought freedom in the North, but also in Canada and Mexico, through the Underground Railroad.

Three years ago, U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, visited Becker's Leicester campus to announce the award of $380,000 in federal funding to transform The May House to a town visitor center and a museum dedicated to the Underground Railroad.

The project is on schedule to be completed by year's end, though work has paused for the winter, according to school spokeswoman Sandy Lashin-Curewitz.

Drawings for the work are almost done, Jack Glassman, director of historic preservation at Bargmann, Hendrie and Archetype Inc. in Boston, said earlier this month.

The first phase of work includes restoring three first-floor rooms focused on interconnecting themes: the May family, the Underground Railroad and the town's history, Mr. Glassman said.

So far approximately $40,000 from the federal grant has been received to cover architectural, environmental and legal costs, said Ms. Lashin-Curewitz.

Before the grant was awarded, Becker invested about $50,000 in the house. The college hasn't raised additional funds since the grant was awarded; it has focused its fundraising on the Leicester campus center that will open at the end of summer, and the 80 Williams St. property at the Worcester campus, said Ms. Lashin-Curewitz.

Additional phases, such as work on the second floor, will be completed as funding becomes available, officials said.

The Rev. Samuel May, who lived from 1810 to 1899, was a leading antislavery figure for more than three decades. His wife Sarah was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution as well as an outspoken proponent for women's suffrage.

His great-great-grandson, S. Judson May , 64, said studying the minister's history is “a lifelong hobby,” and he called it “an exceptional honor” to be his descendant.

Rev. May's father built the house, which is also on the National Register of Historic Places, as a wedding gift for his son. The couple moved into the house in 1835.

The May family occupied the house until it was sold to Becker College, said S. Judson May.

Rev. May graduated from Harvard Divinity School in the early 1830s and settled in Leicester to become the first minister of the Leicester Unitarian Church.

S. Judson May said the family only suspects that the house was a stop on the Underground Railroad, because documentation was “not as good” as the family would like.

Similar references were made in Dorothy Sterling's book about Abby Kelley Foster, “Ahead of Her Time.”

“The problem is, I've never run into the actual documentation — an original letter or something like that — that might substantiate that without any doubt,” said S. Judson May, a geology professor at Collin College in Texas.

The barn at the May House has a trap door in itswooden floor that descended about six or eight steps into a small earthen cellar, S. Judson May said.

“So we suspect that if there were slaves that they were trying to hide, that would be a really convenient place to temporarily store them.”

There were many reasons Rev. May and others wouldn't have advertised. The Fugitive Slave Law passed by Congress in 1850 attached a $2,000 fine and six months of imprisonment for those who used their homes as part of the Underground Railroad.

S. Judson May said growing up in the May House was like living in a museum. Pictures of abolitionists and presidents lined the walls. A few of Rev. May's letters are in the Boston Public Library's Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, while others are at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which sent two representatives to haul away boxes of letters when the family sold the home.

In the second half of the 1800s, the house was a large social center for progressive reformers such as abolitionist Mary Livermore; transcendentalist and Fruitlands co-founder Bronson Alcott and his daughter, and writer Louisa May Alcott, who was a cousin of Rev. May. Because of his views, Rev. May lost several friends and was forced to give up his ministry in 1846. He then became general agent of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in Boston, where he spent the next 20 years working with William Lloyd Garrison, who published the antislavery newspaper, The Liberator.

“He's been one of my heroes in my life. I always looked up to him as somebody I wish I could have known,” said S. Judson May.

S. Judson May compiled a five-volume set of photocopied pages of old letters and memorabilia of Rev. May's belongings and gave them to the Leicester Public Library. He lamented that no book was ever been written about his great-great grandfather, whom he described as more of an organizer among other abolitionists with superior oratory skills.

With the information that's available, S. Judson May suggests Rev. May's life would be an ideal thesis for a graduate student.

J. Donald Lennerton Jr., chairman of the Leicester Historical Commission, which was involved in compiling information about the house and Rev. Samuel May in order to obtain the grant, said it would be nice for the community to have a destination for its history, and to commemorate Rev. Samuel May.

Congress established the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program in 1998.

There isn't a central repository for the Underground Railroad, but the federal program has a goal of serving as a clearinghouse of information relative to the Underground Railroad, said Guy M. Washington, a San Francisco-based regional manager.

“I would suggest we do have a central role in collecting and disseminating information on the Underground Railroad, but we're not known and recognized by all. Many of the stories still live in families' oral traditions, in repositories, often cases where they don't even know that they have the material,” Mr. Washington said.

The agency has about 26 nominations and applications from a January submission deadline that are under consideration as physical sites associated with the history of the Underground Railroad, he said. Nomination deadlines fall twice yearly, on Jan. 15 and July 15.